Hüseyin Ertunç Trio

Mûsikî

Released in 1974 as a private press LP on Intex Records, this cosmic free jazz improvisation by this legendary trio guided by Hüseyin Ertunç - on drums - with his then-regular partners Michael Cosmic and Phil Musra - on saxophones and additional percussion - reveals the primitive and physical approach of the trio, with Ertunç's massive cymbals drumming building a carpet of trance-driving vibe where the reeds can freely dance without any structure.

A new world of improvisational freedom opened up for me when I first heard drummer Huseyin Ertunç's 1974 LP Mûsikî (Intex), with reedmen/multi-instrumentalists/brothers Phil Musra and Michael Cosmic. Ertunç returned to his native Turkey about twenty years ago (and performs with the Konstrukt collective), but Musra - this tune's composer - now resides in Los Angeles and, as regular readers of this blog know, is still active in music. Although I initially assumed that Mûsikî and Musra's companion LP The Creator Spaces were recorded at the same session, in truth Mûsikî was recorded months earlier. The Creator Spaces is a bit more spacious than Ertunç's date, though both are quite intense documents of self-produced and spiritually-directed improvisation. Knotty and weird, there's a folksy unhinged-ness that really spoke to me in a way quite different from Albert Ayler, the AACM, and other music I was spending time with when I dropped the needle on the trio's debut album. Ertunç's percussion work really shocked me and it's still absolutely fascinating, and Cosmic's organ playing behind/around Musra's tenor is just...something else. (Clifford Allen)